Syncing.

I don't know if anyone elses' ball pythons do this, but mine seem to sync their shed cycles together. Last month, my three sub adults all shed within a couple of days of each other. Now, two have just gone "clear" as of today and one shed overnight. Strange? I also had a corn snake shed last night as well. I don't notice the syncing so much with them. However, they pretty much shed like clockwork so I can predict when to look for sheds. It's hard to tell if some of them are in blue because of their color. My snow motley and my hypo lavender can be tricky.

It's pretty convenient because it saves on the food bill that week. I try not to feed them in shed. I will usually offer food in the beginning stages of blue, but never after that. The one who just shed ate her meal like a champ on Tuesday, the other two refused. So, as soon as they leave me some pretty skin, they will have the opportunity to eat food that's been sitting in my closet all week.

The one I'm really waiting to shed is my big girl Tabitha.

She's been locking and building lately. She was bred to a black pastel since October 1st and has been locking consistently with my lesser male since then. She's glowing (in that picture...for a before check out my other blog posts - she's in them!) and looking a little bit lumpy. I hoping to catch a pre-ov shed form her soon. She shed February 4th and before that on January 1. I'm always opening her tub to check for blue or eggs (in case I missed her ovy!).

Have a good evening, readers!

My Greatest Achievement to Date!

I've had a Miami Phase Corn Snake since middle of September. I got her from BHB Reptiles (Brian is an amazing guy to work with). Well, to be technical, my buddy Rob had her thrown into his order and I just picked her up from his apartment.

Anyway.

I couldn't get her to eat frozen. She would snub her nose at all things frozen/thawed. I tried every trick known to man. So, I decided to just let her eat live since she's a great eater.

Today I realized that she was big enough to bump up to hopper mice because she's now 51g. Because the pet store I get my feeders from has varying sizes of hoppers, I figured I would try one more time for her to eat frozen to save me $4 and the headache of trying to find a small enough hopper for her. To my surprise, she ate it! I am super stoked.

Here's a picture of my sweet girl, Callie. She was half her size in this picture. I really need some updated ones of her.

So now I'll be able to fed her frozen like the rest of my corn snakes. My only live eaters are my ball pythons simply because my freezer is not big enough to stock up on frozen small and medium rats in addition to the mice. Maybe one day I'll get me a deep freezer.

ALSO!

I have a building female normal ball python who has been off of feed for 5 weeks. I know this is pretty average, but I was getting worried. She hadn't lost any weight, so I didn't really stress over it. Last week, she ate a medium rat. Figuring it was a fluke, I offered her a medium rat tonight and it barely hit the tub before she was on it.

I guess it's been a pretty good week for feedings!

Have a great week everyone!

Breeding Frustrations

I find it terribly amusing that just when I was getting excited over my lesser male locking up with my normal female and the pastel I have on breeder loan, he suddenly becomes disinterested! I've seen no locks recently.

Both females were off feed. One had palpable follicles, the other had none. One is showing obvious signs of building, the other is not.

Thursday, I just happened to get one of the girls (of course, the one who's got no follicles and showing no building behavior) to eat a small rat.

The male continues to eat and grow. He just seems to have stalled out. With this being my first season, I'm very eager to get babies from these two! Oh well. I guess this will teach me some much needed patience.

Wish me luck, my loyal readers.